The Games

You’ll have to watch the video to find out what they are, but all games that I really love and all of them are in small boxes, I think the largest box was still smaller than the Just One box for size comparison. I also did skip all the roll and writes in my collection. I can and will do a Top 10 of that overall on Malts and Meeples coming up here, because I have played more than ten roll and write games, so I didn’t want to create that overlap.

Okay, I will at the very bottom put down all the games that were in the Top 10 list, and you can see if you can guess the order. Also, let me know in the comments what some of your favorite small box games are. We had a few one ones tossed out there on the live stream with Tiny Epic Galaxies, Mountain Goats, and more. I like games that come in smaller boxes because they are easier to take places, so finding about more is good.

The Beer

Of course there was a beer, this time it was Aqua Fuzz by Indeed Brewing Company out of Minneapolis. Aqua Fuzz is a hazy IPA that has a nice balance of tropical flavors to it. Hazy IPA’s are a hit or miss beer for me. While I love IPA’s, the hazy IPA’s can often end up being too sweet. This comes from some breweries adding in fruit juice to give it more of that tropical flavor. It also provides more of the hazy look that they are going for. However, for me, that causes them to be too sweet. And as we have talked about before, I do not like sweetness in my IPA’s, at least to finish.

Actually The Games

If you don’t have time to watch through the video, save it for later, and you want to see the list now, here are all the games on the list in no particular order.

• Parade
• Claim
• Say Bye to the Villains
• Silver Amulet
• Hanamikoji
• Point Salad
• Cross Clues
• Skull
• Ohanami
• Onirim

Take a stab at what order you think I put them in and watch the video and let me know how close you got to being right.

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In terms of ranking, I picked games that I felt like having a bigger punch for the size they were higher on the list, even passing some games that I liked better. This list is about the depth of game that you can get and really the depth of decisions that you have in the game. These are also going to be all games that I have in my collection, because remembering the size of every game that I don’t have can be tricky.

10 – Ganz Schon Clever

One of two roll and write or flip and write games on the list. A lot of them offer interesting decisions, and I probably could have put more on the list, but I also just did my Top 10 Roll and Writes. I think Ganz Schon Clever really provides and interesting puzzle to try and figure out. The reason it’s lower on the list is simply because you can figure out the puzzle. From that point on with the games in the series, it’s about how well you can optimize the puzzle. That, however, is still fun, and still offers a challenge. I am glad that I’m keeping track of my scores, just to see what numbers I can try and beat in the game.

9 – Skull

Some might find this game as an odd one for the list. It’s a push your luck bluffing game. That might seem too simple, but there is depth there as well. In Skull you are putting down either roses or a skull into your own pile, and eventually someone will open up a bid. Such as, I can flip four tiles without busting, then everyone bids, but the trick is, you have to flip all of your tiles first. You need to be able to read the people who are bidding to see if they are bluffing and they have a skull in there, or not, because you know you don’t have a skull, you can get through their stack and a high number of cards. Or, you might be bluffing by bidding to make someone else thing you don’t have a skull in your stack, when, in fact, you do.

8 – Silver

I’m going to say every version of this game, and all the combinations there of give this game a lot of staying power and a lot of bang for a small box size. There is also strategy to how you play as you try and figure out what cards you have in your village and how many points you have and also figure out what your opponent might have so you can call for scoring at the right time. There’s strategy to how you put in cards into your village, what cards you give your opponent, and how you manipulate the size of your village. Like Ganz Schon Clever, there is a puzzle you can figure out, but there are four versions of the game, each with different sets of cards numbered 0 to 13, and you can mix and match, so that’s a ton of different options you have and a ton of different puzzles.

7 – Say Bye to the Villains

Say Bye to the Villains is an extremely hard cooperative game. You are Samurai who are going to fight against some Villains in ten days. You are building up your health, speed, and attack, but also trying to figure out what the Villains are up to, so that the correct Samurai are assigned and can beat the correct villains. What makes this game feel so big is that you can’t quite do everything you want in the game. You are always pushing your luck with that last villain that you aren’t quite sure you can beat. I also like the strategy that goes behind either having enough health to survive an attack or enough speed to attack before a villain. The game is one that I have yet to beat, but I still really like the challenge.

6 – Hats

Welcome to the Madd Hatters tea party, you are trying to collect your best hat collection. This game twists off of normal card playing games. Normally you play cards in your hand to score or manipulate placement of things, but in this, you are placing them down on the table at the tea party. You then take the hat that was there. The rules for placing a hat are simple, it either needs to be the same color or the higher number. At the end of the game, the hats score based off of where they are on the table. The challenge comes in setting it up so that you can score at the end of the game in the hat colors you want, so leaving one of that color out that someone else can’t take so that you can score, but also collecting enough to score well. The balance is great because you mess it up, another player might remove the last pink hat from the board, and now all those pink hats won’t score. Or maybe, instead, the make it so the lowest scoring pink is now one point instead of six. It’s a fun and chaotic hand management game.

5 – Onirim

The only true solo game on the list, Onirim is my go to for a fast solo game. The basics are simple, play down three cards of the same color in a row and don’t have any matching symbols next to each other, you get to put out a door card, get six out you win the game. The big part of the game comes with the key cards. These cards are extremely powerful and can be used for a lot of things. You can play them down as another symbol to get out a key, you can hold onto them and use them if a nightmare comes up, or a door of that color comes up, or you can dig through the draw pile with them. The strategy for how to use them can go all over the place, and depending on the game state, you might need to do one over the others. Plus the game, in the Second Edition, comes with a lot of modules as well to add in more and different challenges, but those are all just a few cards.

4 – The Lost Expedition

Another cooperative game on the list, The Lost Expedition’s game play is interesting and challenging. The big part comes from the adventure that you are on, and how you go on your hikes, or explorations for the day to reach the lost City of Z. A lot of cooperative games an alpha player can take over the game. In The Lost Expedition, it gets around that issue by players not being allowed to discuss what card they are playing. And the order cards are played changes depending on morning or evening. In the morning, you can pick and choose your path, which means the cards go in numerical order, at night it’s whatever order the cards are played in. After that the group discusses and spends resources to go down the paths they have created, always trying to push closer to the city. There can be a lot of good discussion in this game and lots of hard decisions.

3 – Hanamikoji

Hanamikoji is a very simple game. You have four choices of actions per round, and you do each of them once. You play down a card face down that you’ll use to win favor, two face down to not use to score, three face up and your opponent picks one, or two sets of two face up and your opponent picks one. Each player wants to win the favor of four Geisha so that they will grace your restaurant or eleven points worth of Geisha. Which cards you present to your opponent are always a pains taking decision. You want them to be equally as good for you no matter what your opponent picks. But, you don’t know all the cards your opponent has, what cards your opponent has played face down, or what card isn’t in the round. I feel the struggle hoping that I won’t give my opponent the game every time I play Hanamikoji.

2 – Hanabi

Hanabi is an odd game, but one that makes you think a lot. The challenge of this game comes from the fact you can’t see your own cards. And you, as a collective, are trying to put down fireworks in ascending order for three different colors. That seems impossible, but you give each other clues. The downside is that the clues aren’t as specific as you’d want. If my hand is a red three and four, a green two, and a blue one and two. A clue could be, “That card is a one” or “Those two cards are blue” or “Those two cards are twos”. We only complete one one through five of each color, so we need to give good clues, but you point out all the cards of a color or a number. As the player who receives the clue, that means you are keeping track of all that information in your head and by moving cards around in your hand. Clues are also a limited resource, so eventually you discard cards to get clues back, and that is a risk as well. Extremely challenging, Hanabi plays fast and has a lot of game to it.

1 – Cartographers

My number one big game in a small package is Cartographers, my other roll and write, or flip and write, game on the list. Cartographers shines because of it’s scoring. I talk about it a lot for that reason. In Cartographers you score four different scoring cards, A through D, but in any season you only ever score two of them. So Spring has you scoring A and B, then Summer, B and C, Fall, C and D, and Winter, D and then A again. You really need to plan out and balance your scoring. If you focus too much on one of them, you might not score well in other rounds. For example, if you focus too much on A, you might score poorly in Summer because you aren’t scoring B, but then come Winter you’ll score A again, so there’s an interesting balance of how you place everything on your map to score. I always feel like my time scoring for card Bis wasted, but without it, I’d have two early bad rounds. The game has a whole lot more thought to it than it’d seem.

There are other games I considered as well. Letter Jam, a Hanabi like word game is amazing, but I considered it just a bit too big. Draftosaurus and Fruit Picking are family-weight games that pack a little bit less punch but are great as well. And on my shelf are so many more games I need to try, like Claim, The Crew, Arboretum, which I’ve heard packs a big punch, and more. What are some of your favorite small games that pack a big punch?

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Stocking Stuffers are going to be small games, though a few of them might be slightly too large for a small stocking, but they are going to be smaller games and hopefully slightly cheaper options for you as well. These games are not going to be big and grandiose, but hopefully you’ll find a good range of games for the people in your lives. This list isn’t in a best to worst or vice-a-versa order, just alphabetical

Age of War – This game will easily fit into a stocking. It is a simple little dice game where you are trying to collect fortresses by rolling combinations on the dice. If you get a set, you can lock them in, but if not, someone can try and steal it from you, though it’s a little bit trickier. This game is very simple and small. It’s a good game for people who like a bit of dice rolling, but don’t want anything too thinky.

Boss Monster – A game that’s a bit bigger than Age of War, but it’s still easy to play. Each person is a monster in a 8-bit video game and you are trying to set-up your dungeon and lair so that you can defeat all the heroes who are coming from the town. But you also have to be able to attract them. But if they don’t die in your dungeon, you don’t want to take too much damage. This is for someone who likes a lot of nerdy things and retro video games being one of them. There are good nods to other nerdy things on the cards.

Cat Cafe – Your crazy cat lady aunt will love you for this game, though you’ll probably have to teach it to her. It’s a bit more complex than some roll and writes, but in the game, you are creating your own cat towers to attract cats to you. You score in various ways by placing mice toys together or by getting food dishes or other things your cats would love. This is a good game for the whole family.

Criss Cross – Another roll and write, you might see a third on the list, but Criss Cross is a little game, but a good one for people who like to puzzle out the best score. In Criss Cross you are rolling dice and everyone is placing the symbols rolled onto their own board, but you have to remember that you are scoring both columns and rows, so you don’t want to have too many of them that score zero. It’s a very small game and easy to play multiple times.

Gloom – This is completely different than the other games, because Gloom is a story telling game. In it you are taking turns playing down cards to either make your opponents characters lives go better, or to make yours go worst until you can kill off your whole family. You are telling the horrible things that are happening to them as you play card. This has a nice dark humor to the game, and it just ends up being silly fun for a potentially dark theme. Plus, the cards are clear plastic, so that they stack on top of previous cards and you can see through.

Hanabi – A card driven game, Hanabi is unique because the cards aren’t facing you. Your hand of cards is facing your opponents and they are giving clues to help you play down your cards. You are all trying to work together to get stacks of fireworks from 1 to 5 of their colors, but if you play down the wrong number or the wrong color, you lose a fuse, and you don’t want it to blow up in your face. It’s a unique idea and it works well for a small box game.

Hanamikoji – This is a great game to get for your significant other, if they enjoy gaming. It’s a two player only abstract game where you are trying to win favors of various Geisha. But to do so, you must give them gifts using four actions that you can take. And your opponent has the same four actions. When you use them and the choices you make are what work well in this thinky game. It plays fast, though, and generally I’ve found that people want to play again after the first game.

Just One – Okay, you’ll need a large stocking for this one. The game isn’t that huge, but it’s larger than most. A cooperative word based party game, this one is great for your family if you are sick and tired of playing the same party games over and over again from the 90’s or you’ve read every single Apples to Apples and Cards Against Humanity card. In Just One, one person is it, and you are all trying to get them to guess a word, but you can only write down a one word clue. If you match with someone, though, both clues are hidden. It’s a super fun game that takes the place of a lot of other party games.

Onirim – Maybe you have a family member who likes to play solitaire games, probably including solitaire, but they haven’t jumped into modern board games. Onirim is a great game for a solitaire player with simple rules in the base game, and a lot of challenge as you are playing cards, it’s one of the best purely solo games out there. The artwork is unique, but I like it, and the game is small, just a bunch of cards, so it won’t feel like too much.

Parade – This game can be a bit hard to find, but if you can get your hands on it, it’s an interesting card collection game where you are trying to get as few cards and as few points as possible. But, in a twist, if you get the most of a certain color/suit, those cards only count as a single point. It’s an abstract little game, but the Alice in Wonderland artwork will draw people in.

Say Bye to the Villains – If the person likes hard games, this will be a good option. Say Bye to the Villains is a very hard game, I haven’t beaten it, but a ton of fun. You are all Samurai who have 10 days to prepare to fight a group of villains at the end of that time each of you will face off against one. You can prepare by improving your stats or scouting out the villains. This game works well, because it’s cooperative and you feel like you can’t get everything done that you need to. Extremely tough, good variety in the game, and if you are looking for a challenge it’ll be a good choice.

Second Chance – We’re back to roll and writes, but Second Chance is a great one for it, and a simpler one. In this game, two cards are flipped and you have to draw in the shape shown of one of them on your board. The person who has the fewest spaces left at the end of the game wins. However, to keep it from being the same, each person has a unique starting shape, and if you use larger shapes, you might run out of room faster, but you get a bonus spot. If you can’t fill in one of the shapes, you get a second chance, and if you can use that new shape, that is just for you, you can keep playing. The game has a nice art feel to it and works well in large groups. Another game that you will play multiple times in a single sitting.

Stipulations – Another party game is making the list, and this one will easily fit in a stocking. Too many party games either need to have a ton of cards, Apples to Apples/Cards Against Humanity, because you go through them quickly, or they have large pieces like Catch Phrase, but Stipulations is a fun game in a small package. In the game the person who is it picks a dream job, super power, life time supply or fulfilled dream that then other players write a stipulation for. It’s a good creative game, and one that you can make as dirty or as clean as you want, so you can always play with anyone.

Unlock! – Any of the Unlock games, or the Exit games, would work in this spot, but if you have someone who loves escape rooms, give them an escape room in a box. Unlock puts you into a situation that you have to combine cards, solve riddles and other puzzles and figure out the solution before time runs out. And then when it does, you can still finish, you just get fewer points, but you can watch the clock count down and get stressed out. If you are looking for that escape room experience but on a budget, it works well with groups too, probably up to 6 players maximum, though I think 4 is the ideal number.

Alright, I don’t know how many that was, but it’s a good variety of games that you can stick in people stockings. If you want, you can probably find one for everyone in your family. Board games are fun to give and get over the holidays because you can then turn them into a family activity if you want.

Which game would you want to get in your stocking? Which one would you be most apt to give?

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I’m hear to let you know that your board gaming doesn’t have to be that way.

Now, maybe you like the heavily confrontational games, and that’s great. I like a lot of the modern ones, because they aren’t as table flipping as someone getting lucky roll after lucky roll and chipping away at your army in Risk.

But maybe you want to play a game that feels more peaceful. Maybe you want to relax and enjoy the gaming experience that way. I think that’s a viable option in our age of board gaming as well. There are more and more games that are being put out to create that zen gaming experience.

They tend to be smaller games that are more puzzle based and that limit the player interactions, but they are out there. With the large number of roll and write board games, we’re seeing a lot of them come out of there. That’s because you aren’t interacting with other people, you are building out your own solution to the puzzle, and what someone else does doesn’t effect you.

Games like Welcome To…, Criss Cross and Second Chance fall into this category. These roll and write games really have you focusing on your own puzzle, and while there can be a little bit of stress hoping that something will show up, you really can just sit back and let the cards or the dice decide what you are going to do. And with Second Chance, you are filling in spots on a board and it gives you the chance to doodle and just enjoy as you go.

Thinking about it, there aren’t any larger games that I would consider to be that relaxing. Now, I consider most games to be relaxing because it’s a great way for me to unwind. But the ones that focus a lot of the zen aspect are those smaller games. I think there is a good reason for that. In something bigger that has more of a time investment, you need to be kept hooked for longer. Something like Welcome To… is a 30 minute game, no matter how many players you have, so you are done before you start to notice that there isn’t any major hook to draw you into the game long term.

When you’re playing a larger game, even a cooperative game, you want to feel the pressure from the game or from the other players. There’s either a story or some sort of conflict that you want to deal with. Even in Euro games, while they are building up your trading and you might be just doing that yourself, there’s a limited number of spaces, so there is an interaction piece where someone takes where you want to go, even though there will be other good options as well for you.

But, there are certainly games that are more stressful in the larger game category and less stressful ones. And the ones that are more story driven, they can be less stressful until they are a dungeon crawl as dealing with the monsters is always a bit stressful. But something like Tales of the Arabian Nights, because you never know what story you’re going to get, you can just enjoy the story and you don’t feel the pressure from the game because you can’t fish for certain types of stories for those last points. Though, that might be frustrating for some people, because it is so random. Another larger game that is pretty relaxing is Charterstone. That is because as a worker placement, you can bump someone’s worker back to their hand, so you’re always able to go anywhere, which means that there’s no pressure with that part of the game, you just have to decide if you’re going to help someone else by bumping their worker. And in it, your point engine is just your point engine and no one can really mess it up.

That said, the smaller relaxing games are nice because they are a good pallet cleanser. They give you a chance to relax and relax your brain, some, before you jump back into something heavier. And with the likes of Welcome To… and Second Chance, they still give you decisions to make, but the pressure, with the card flip or die roll is less on you as a player because those things are random and well beyond your control.

What are some board games that you find relaxing to play? Are there any larger games out there that are relaxing?

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Christmas is almost upon us, so we’re starting with games that would make great stocking stuffers. A lot of games come in big boxes, but what are some games that can fit in smaller boxes that are popular or that I enjoy.

Love Letter

There are a ton of flavors of this game as they have slapped all sort of different things onto it from the original medieval setting to Batman. Pick the one that is best for the person you are giving it to. In the game you are trying to get your love letter to the princess, in the base game, by playing cards to try and stop the other suitors from getting their letter to the princess. This is a very fast game for two to four players and would easily fit into a stocking.

Zombie Dice

Zombie Dice is another game that I’ve talked about a fair amount, it’s a simple die rolling game where you are a zombie trying to catch humans and eat their brains, but they might be trying to shoot you back, so you push your luck while rolling the dice to see how many brains you want to bank in a race to 13 brains. It’s basically Farkle, but simpler. The zombie theme might not work for some people, but it’s a good stocking stuffer as it’s an easy game to teach.

Parade

A tricky little game with an Alice in Wonderland theme on top of it. It’s really an abstract game, but the artwork makes it better to look at. You are trying to have the fewest points when someone has collected cards of all the colors. The cards have different point totals on them, so you can kind of judge the score. But if you have the most of a color, all of those cards are worth one point. There are different ways you collect cards based on the number and color of the cards. It’s a bit more of a thinky game and one that offers some interesting decisions in a small package.

Onirim

This one is for someone who likes games and wants to play them all of the time. it’s a small card game for up to two players, but really is a game for one player. It’s a tricky little card game where you are trying to play cards in order by color but not repeating symbols. With that, you are stuck in a dream trying to find dream doors before you run out of cards because the nightmares have gotten you. The game is a bit spendier than some of them, but it comes with several expansions that gives the game nice variety.

We Didn’t Playtest This Legacy

Yes, this is a legacy game, but it’s a tiny legacy game. Give this game as a stocking stuffer to the person who runs board game night. We Didn’t Playtest This is a silly game where you are playing cards that can either protect you, or people select one of a couple of options, and people are eliminated. You can play lots of rounds of this game fast. It’s a good filler game to start a board game night or between longer board games. The regular game is a bit boring, but Legacy version has some fun bits where when someone wins with some of the cards, they can put their name on the card that might give them in the instant win. Or the card might ask them to add a word that people can’t say or a letter they can’t use. It allows a group to really set-up in jokes for their own play groups.

Sushi Go!

Not Sushi Go! Party, which is too big to fit in a stocking, unless it’s a Hobbit stocking (woo big feet joke). Sushi Go! is still a fun game, there is just less variety in the game. But because of it being less variety, it means that it might be easier to get repeat plays out of it with a group that isn’t as game playing heavy. They don’t have to relearn the scoring ever. Sushi Go! is a drafting game where you selecting cards from a hand and building sets that give you points. There are three rounds of drafting cards, and the person with the most points at the end of three rounds wins the game. It’s a very cute game as well which makes it easier to sell.

Unlock Games

Finally, if you have an escape room enthusiast, these are the games for them. They are escape rooms in a box. You are looking for clues, trying to combine cards to get more clues to escape the scenario that they are in. It’s a one time play through of the game, but these games are about experiences. It could even be, if you don’t want to give a one time use game as a stocking stuffer, a game you could play with family and friends over the holidays that everyone will be able to understand. These games also have nice pressure as you are racing against the clock. Definitely the most challenging of the games on the list.

What are some other small games that would make a good stocking stuffer? I know there are games like the Tiny Epic Galaxies and the rest of the Tiny Epic series or Mintworks which are popular now.

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